Sharp Shooter

by Marianne Delacourt

  ‘I am what I need to be at any given time, Mr Delgado,’ I countered. ‘When discretion is needed you won’t even notice I’m there.’ I smiled and kept my posture deliberately relaxed but not too open. A man like Delgado might misinterpret that as a come-on.

  He placed one hand over his mouth and rubbed his chin. Not a good sign.

  My foot started to jiggle before I could stop it. I was blowing it.

  His eyes were drawn to the movement but continued up past my ankle and along the length of my leg to my thigh. ‘Do you wear high heels, Ms Sharp?’

  ‘Not when I’m running,’ I quipped.

  ‘You run?’ His eyebrows rose into a surprised peak.

  ‘I used to,’ I said. ‘Until I switched codes.’

  ‘To?’

  ‘Basketball. State player until I was nineteen. I couldn’t choose between it and athletics.’ I sighed. I wasn’t above bragging if I needed to. And I needed to do something.

  Delgado’s face relaxed and he smiled – if you could call it that. ‘Well, Ms Sharp, Mr Hara recommended you, and you do have certain attributes that lend themselves to the nature of this job.’ He rose and walked to the door. ‘You’ll be given a retainer once I’ve run a background check on you. I’ll be in touch.’

  A background check? Why the – He handed me a card. ‘This has my private number. Do not share it with anyone. Terms are as per Mr Hara’s usual rates with a thousand-dollar bonus if the job is exemplary,’ he finished.

  A thousand-dollar bonus. Yikes! Maybe Mr Hara would let me keep the bonus. After all, that hadn’t been mentioned. ‘Fabulous,’ said I.

  Then I left in my most serene, lady-like manner.

  Out in reception Giggler was talking to an attractive but sullen-looking woman wearing dangerously high stilettos. Giggler whispered something to her as I walked past, but I didn’t catch it over the blood still pounding in my ears.

  Chapter 10

  ONCE OUTSIDE THE KLINTOFF House foyer, I sprinted up the hill to my car, whooping. A thousand smackeroonies! On the way home I stopped at Perky’s Pies and the newsagents for two caramel tarts and a copy of Sports Today, to celebrate.

  By the time I got home it was dark, I had twenty cents left, and I was on more than just a sugar high.

  As I walked down JoBob’s empty, darkened driveway I heard a mass of screeching and fluttering. Crap! I’d forgotten to walk the birds and they were killing each other.

  JoBob’s birds were native Australian pink and grey cockatoos with the mischievous cunning of bored three-year-olds. They beaked everything, including each other, to bits, and they loved their ‘out’ time. Normally JoBob walked the birds up and down the driveway and onto their perfectly manicured lawn, first thing in the morning and around drinkies time in the late afternoon; unless of course they went out and then it was left to me.

  There were only a couple of dead-set rules with the galahs. Don’t forget to feed and water them (doh!), and don’t take them out in the dark because they were likely to disappear into a bush or under a hedge never to be seen again.

  When I reached the cage, I poked my finger in between the bars, and made clicking noises. Hoo, the little sook, scrambled over to me for a scratch, but Brains was cranky and gave me her best side. I walked around to the other end of the cage – which I could have lived in, it was so damn big – and stuck my finger closer to her. Brains whipped her head around quicker than a brown snake and bit me.

  ‘Owww. You cranky old bag.’ I snatched my finger back and reached into my bag for some caramel tart crumbs as a peace offering.

  As I dragged the wrapper out and dangled the bag before Brains, I remembered a call I wanted to make. I dialled Garth.

  Brains relented and came closer. I returned to the front of the cage and opened the door. Brains followed me around there, as my now least favourite accountant answered his phone.

  ‘Garth here.’

  ‘Loser!’

  ‘Who is this?’

  ‘Work it out, dirt bag,’ I growled.

  Silence.

  I jiggled the bag at Brains. She crept closer, but Hoo, the greedy guts, overtook her. He climbed right over her back and plunged his head inside the bag.

  ‘Stop it, you bad boy!’ I cried.

  ‘Tara? Tara, is that you?’

  I tried to pull the bag out of the cage, but Hoo came with it, ripping at the paper with vehemence.

  ‘Of course it’s me. The one who works as a paid escort.’

  Garth began to laugh. ‘He didn’t really call you, did he?’

  I thought about how I would reply as I did battle with Hoo. Then Brains came from nowhere, jumped onto my wrist, nipped it and climbed out of the gate onto the top of the cage.

  ‘Shit!’ I said into the phone. I dropped the paper bag and it crashed to the cage floor with Hoo inside it.

  ‘No need to get so mad,’ said Garth. ‘I didn’t think he’d really follow up. It was a joke. And I didn’t say you were a paid escort. I said you knew a lot about body language these days. He made the wrong connection. Tara?’

  ‘Sorry baby. Are you alright?’ I crooned down at Hoo.

  Hoo emerged from the bag and fluffed his feathers in a huff.

  ‘Tara! You’re talking nonsense. Are you drunk?’

  ‘Of course I’m not drunk,’ I snapped. ‘It’s only seven o’clock.’ I swung the cage door shut, and began to make clicking noises with my tongue to woo Brains.

  She was having none of it and scampered to the back edge of the cage.

  I climbed up onto the lip of the spill tray to try to reach her. JoBob would have me taxidermied if I lost Brains. Unfortunately, it wasn’t as strong as it looked, and it buckled under my weight. I crashed through it and Brains took fright.

  Even with her clipped wings she could fly a few metres. She fluttered down to the driveway and then scuttled over to the neighbour’s hedge.

  I began to croon and click again but Brains was well and truly spooked. A car tooted out on the street, and she was gone into the hedge like a rat down a drain.

  ‘Shit! Bugger! Shit!’ I yelped.

  ‘Tara! Get a grip of yourself. You sound deranged.’

  ‘Grrr!’ was all I could manage before I snapped the phone shut and plunged after Brains.

  My chase took me through Mr Jameson’s garden and down the back lane. Every time I got within an arm’s length of Brains, she’d flip her wings. It was like chasing paper in the wind. Our little dance continued to the end of JoBob’s back lane and into another. And another. My crooning started to give way to growling-like noises.

  When a dog from a high-walled back yard began to howl like crazy, Brains’s snipped wings beat frantically and she sailed up over a galvanised-steel fence.

  I peered through the fence into the grounds of a Euccy Grove mansion. There was a TV glow somewhere in the house and a dim back porch light on, but that was all. Surely they wouldn’t notice if I just snuck in and grabbed my bird. I mean if I went to the front door and asked, I’d lose sight of Brains and then . . .

  I could see her in the porch glow now, poor silly bird, sitting halfway up a small jam tree, shivering. I went to hitch a leg up, but my pants were too tight to climb it. Without stopping to think, I stripped them off and shimmied over the fence in my knickers.

  I crept up to the tree and put my finger out. Brains jumped on, ran up my arm to my shoulder and cuddled into my neck.

  ‘Sook,’ I chastised.

  Now I had to get back over the fence with her on my shoulder. I was halfway through that delicate manoeuvre when I heard noises – screams and the slamming of doors. A back screen on the next-door mansion crashed open, and a house alarm began squalling. All the neighbourhood dogs set off in chorus, as a figure hurtled out into the night.

  Burglar!

  With Brains on my shoulder, and the fence peaks jabbing into my soft bits, I jumped down into the alley and dialled 000. I told the cop operator where I was and what was happening. ‘Take down my
mobile number. I’ll try and watch where he goes.’

  She started to say something about my personal safety, but I hung up.

  The burglar headed in the opposite way down the alley from me, and veered left. I figured his getaway car must be in the next lane, so I took a shortcut alongside Professor Evans’s orchid house – the way I used to go when I was wagging school.

  Brains hopped around on my shoulder, not happy at the speed I was moving, so I coaxed her onto my hand and slipped her inside my shirt. She raked her claws along my bare skin in complaint.

  ‘Shush!’ I paused to uproot a weed, which I poked in the vicinity of her beak. She latched onto it and settled into crunching as I pelted through into the next lane.

  A small white car was parked up against a fence but there was no sign of the burglar.

  My phone rang. ‘Yes?’

  ‘This is Constable Bligh of the Eucalyptus Grove police. Did you call in a burglary sighting?’ said a formal voice.

  ‘Yes. I think I’ve found the getaway car. Where are you?’

  ‘Violet Street,’ said the cop.

  ‘Take the back lane. The car’s halfway along. He’s not here yet. He might have got lost getting back to it.’

  ‘Stay out of sight, Miss –’ ‘Yeah, yeah.’ I hung up and crouched down behind the bumper of the white car.

  Moments later I heard the rasp of laboured breathing. I peeked around the bumper. The burglar had climbed over someone’s fence and was running towards the car. If he got out of the laneway before the cops arrived, he’d get away. The cops were close. I just had to delay him for a minute.

  I opened my shirt and popped Brains down on the ground. She was still beaking her weed. Poor darling was starving.

  As the burglar passed the boot, I blindsided him. Not just a girlie push, but a full-scale knees-and-ankles rugby league tackle worthy of State of Origin.

  We grappled as headlights flooded the lane and police cars bore down on us from either end.

  ‘Get off!’ shouted the figure, lashing out at me with his fists and feet.

  I took one in the eye and screamed.

  Brains screeched and flew at him, pecking the burglar’s face like she was a trained killer.

  I dropped a knee into what I hoped was the region of his groin but only caught his thigh.

  ‘Freeze,’ bellowed a cop voice.

  A spotlight fixed on us, but the guy was still flailing at Brains, who was doing a pro-boxer’s job of evading him and still getting in a nip.

  ‘Stop it! Stop it!’ he cried.

  ‘Sit still,’ I snarled. ‘She’ll keep attacking while you jump around like that.’

  He swiped at her again and this time I kicked him hard in the nuts. He went limp and Brains settled on his chest where she dropped a dirty dollop.

  The cops from one car ran up. One of them shooed Brains away and rolled the guy over. In the cop’s torchlight I could see the burglar’s face: low forehead, thick curly hair, and a pained expression. Not a face I’d forget on account of the vicious look he was giving me as he cupped his balls. ‘I’ll get you for this, bitch.’

  The other cop helped me up, as the burglar was cuffed and dragged off to the car.

  ‘The people you meet in a dark alley,’ said my cop.

  I stared at him. His voice sounded unhappily familiar. ‘Wh-Whitey? Is that you?’

  ‘Tara Sharp, where are your pants?’ he replied. ‘And what were you doing chasing burglars?’

  ‘I wasn’t,’ I declared hotly. ‘I was chasing my bird. She got out of her cage and flew into someone’s back yard.’ I pointed at the mansions beyond. ‘I had to take my pants off to climb the fence and catch her.’

  ‘So you were trespassing then?’ I heard a catch of laughter in his voice.

  ‘I was on a fence. This guy came bolting out from next door.’

  ‘What do you reckon, Tony? Shall we cuff her?’

  Tony – the other cop – flashed his torch around the back yard. ‘I reckon so. Girls in underwear can be hazardous.’

  I felt a hot flush of anger. Men were all the same.

  ‘Down boys,’ said a female voice. The cops from the other car had joined our merry little group. One of them was a woman. ‘What’s your name, love?’ she asked.

  ‘Tara,’ I said.

  ‘That your bird there?’

  Everyone stared at Brains. She was sitting huddled in the midst of our feet.

  ‘Yes.’ I bent over and made friendly sounds. If Brains decided to pull another running-away stunt now, they’d never believe me. But Brains – bless her beak – waddled over to sit on my hand. She was looking sleepy. I lifted her onto my shoulder. She click-clicked in my ear and then purred.

  ‘Can I please go home?’ I asked. ‘I need to put her in her cage.’ Before JoBob finds out.

  ‘’Fraid not, Tara.’ The woman reached over and scratched Brains on the crest. The bird let her do it without ruffling a feather. She liked women more than men. ‘You’ll have to come to the station and make a statement.’

  ‘Then can I please go and get my pants.’

  ‘Don’t get dressed on my account,’ said Whitey. He and his sidekick burst out laughing.

  Chapter 11

  THE EUCCY GROVE COP shop was a fifties brick and tile with a concrete parking lot out the front and a rose garden at the side. At night, in winter, with only the station floodlights on, the rose garden looked like grotesque sculptures.

  It turned out that the perp – whose name was Sam Barbaro – had taken fright when an occupant disturbed him, and fled into the night.

  The female cop, Fiona Bligh, took my statement and then said Brains and I could go home.

  ‘Any chance of a ride?’ I asked. ‘I don’t have my purse with me. Prefer not to ring my parents.’

  Bligh glanced around. ‘Well, we’re not supposed to, but . . . under the circumstances . . . alright.’ She turned to her partner, ‘Bill, find a towel for the seat. That bird is a crap machine.’

  ‘All birds are crap machines,’ I said, scratching Brains under the chin. ‘But she’s also a hero.’

  Bill and Fiona agreed on that count.

  They drove me home and promised to drop some peanuts around when they had a chance.

  I returned Brains to a very grateful and slightly frantic Hoo, fed them both and staggered off to bed.

  It seemed I’d just laid my head on the pillow when JoBob’s voice perforated my dreams. I sat up floundering as I fought off a nightmare involving Whitey and his tentacle fingers.

  JoBob was at the sliding door, rattling the handle for all it was worth.

  I pulled some jeans on under my knee-length tee, stumbled over and flicked the lock open. ‘Wassa panic,’ I mumbled, unhappily. I had pins and needles in one arm and a crappy taste in my mouth.

  Joanna was clutching the daily paper, which she thrust under my nose. ‘Tara Mary Sharp, explain page two.’

  I took the paper and retreated to my couch where I spread it open. The headline read ‘One Bird in the Hand . . .’ with a subheader, Childhood sweethearts reunited to foil robbery. Alongside the article were photos of Whitey in his cop uniform, wearing a smarmy smile, and me, taken at Bok’s birthday party the previous summer. I had on a strapless top and looked liked I could easily do ten rounds with Kostya Tszyu.

  My heart lurched as I skim read the lead-in. Eucalyptus Grove socialite and one-time state athlete, Tara Sharp, was reunited with her former boyfriend, Constable Greg Whitehead, as they foiled a robbery on an aged woman living in Ms Sharp’s home suburb.

  What about the bird, was all I could think!

  My phone rang and I fished it out of my jeans automatically. ‘Tara Sharp.’

  ‘Keep your hands off my husband!’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘My husband. Keep away from him,’ she screamed before hanging up.

  I sat in stunned silence, with Joanna doing the hands-on-hips, furrowed brow, and where-did-I-go-wrong thing across the ro
om.

  The phone rang again. I snatched it open. ‘Listen here, who the hell –’ ‘Ms Sharp?’

  I recognised the cool, arrogant voice and choked off my tirade.

  ‘This is Peter Delgado.’

  ‘Yes,’ I squeaked. ‘When and where?’ I listened to the address he gave me. ‘I’ll be there.’

  I snapped the phone shut and the room was suddenly very quiet.

  ‘I’m waiting, Tara.’ Joanna stopped short of toe-tapping but I could see it was on her mind.

  ‘It’s nothing, mother, just a blatant example of sensationalist journalism,’ I said, before launching into an amended version of events, leaving out the part about taking my pants off.

  ‘I can’t believe you let Brains out of her cage at night. Poor darling, I’d better go and see if she’s alright,’ she humphed, and pattered off.

  I sighed and slumped back on my couch. What a start to the day.

  ‘Ahem.’

  I glanced up at the door and realised that the other half of the JoBob entity was still there.

  ‘Dad? Come in.’

  My father, Robert – known to everyone as Bob – was the gentlest of gentlemen with a quiet sense of humour that he kept well hidden from Mum. As a kid I’d thought him invincible and heroic. Now I realised he was just a nice man married to a very dominating woman. I think I loved him more for that. He was so real.

  He shuffled forward in his dressing gown and tartan slippers. My father wouldn’t be seen dead in a pair of thongs.

  ‘Tara, you know I don’t like to interfere. You’re a grown woman with a life of your own. But I’m worried about this new line of work you’ve taken up. If you need money . . .’ he started, his face turning pink with embarrassment.

  I felt guilty and I wasn’t sure why. ‘You know what I’m doing? I’ve been deliberately vague.’

  ‘I haven’t said anything to your mother, of course, but I was in here unblocking the sink and your phone rang.’

  ‘You answered my phone?’

  ‘I thought it might be important. Tara, what are these group sessions?’

  For the second time that morning I was speechless. When the shock of what my father was inferring wore off, I began to giggle. The giggle turned into a laugh and the laugh into a guffaw until I was hee-hawing in a most unladylike fashion.